Government Spending for the Two Sessions

From Qizhi Meinu Tuming Blog, translated by CDT:

According to People.Com.Cn, Beijing Jing Xi Hotel is well prepared to serve the members of the two sessions meeting (as the NPC and CPPCC are called). For meals, the hotel made two menus and added a variety of recipes to make sure no redundant dishes would be served within three days. For sleeping, hotels arranged hard beds for some members with poor backs. For transportation, Beijing Traffic Management Bureau checked all the cars for the members and even sent special workers to serve the different delegations. For security, there are over 650, 000 patrol policemen on streets during the two sessions.

Beijing City Council directly spent RMB 100 million yuan for the two sessions, and another RMB 300 million yuan for security, communication and transportation. Altogether, it costs over RMB 500 million yuan for the two sessions. Including the central government’s spending, it costs over RMB 5 billion yuan for the two sessions. This money is equivalent to every Chinese person, including each senior, child, and even baby, to donate RMB 4 yuan for the two sessions every year. The expense for each two sessions member is as much as the total annual income of two Chinese farmers.

According to the official financial record from Huarong town in Hunan province, the expense for the two sessions is over RMB two million yuan. There are 2, 861 towns in China. If using Huarong town as an example, the 2, 861 towns totally spent over RMB 2.8 billion yuan for the two sessions.

There are 265 cities in China and each city includes 4 to 11 towns. If considering each city includes 6 towns, every city spent at least five million yuan for the two sessions. Then for 265 cities the expense is over RMB 1.3 billion yuan.

So far, there are 34 provincial administration districts in China, including 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 autonomous cities and 2 special economic zones. According to the city level expense for two sessions, the two sessions’ cost is at least RMB 20 million yuan for each province. Despite the two special economic zones it costs RMB 680 million yuan for the 32 provincial administration districts in China.